Collaborations of Consequence
These investments confront our common challenge: leading lasting, department-level change from university-wide roles. As these efforts get underway, FAN will continue to provide virtual communities of support and learning for faculty, chairs, deans, and others.
ivy plus MELLON LEADERSHIP FELLOWS: ADVANCING HUMANITIES LEADERSHIP
In 2023, FAN was awarded a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to launch the Ivy+ Mellon Leadership Fellows program, which aims to increase the representation of humanities faculty members occupying the highest administrative offices in the academy. Nine FAN members will together appoint a cohort of tenured faculty in the humanities as Fellows who will undergo a comprehensive program of skill development in academic leadership and governance over a period of at least two years.
Participating members include Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Princeton, Stanford, UChicago, UPenn, and Yale.
Across our member campuses, a cohort of 50 Fellows have been selected by Provosts and Deans to join a series of world-class scholars in higher education to help us examine academic routines, center equity in policies and norms, and ultimately lead more inclusive departments. This collaboration tackles the root opportunity that emerged in FAN’s landscape analysis and is confirmed both by abundant scholarship and our own campus surveys: local climates and cultures “where faculty live” and where chairs have the greatest discretion to make improvements that last beyond their appointments.
Our digital assets—recorded modules, facilitators’ guides, worksheets—will be available to FAN members and other partners in accordance with our consortium’s mission.
The Institute launched early in the 2022-23 academic year. Click here for a glimpse at our launch event held at Yale University. Six “inquiries” follow the launch, each directed by a scholar whose work brings to light opportunities faculty leaders have to make a difference in their discretionary spaces. At the end of the year, Fellows reconvene to design and propose interventions likely to yield systemic improvements in diversity and inclusion in the American professoriate.
Participating members include Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UChicago, UPenn, and Yale.
shared principles for measuring faculty diversity & inclusion
FAN is fostering conversation and cooperation among our diversity, faculty, and institutional research (IR) leaders on shared principles for measuring our universities’ progress in faculty diversity and inclusion. A team of sense-makers will inventory, audit, adapt, and disseminate definitions and measures for better understanding ourselves and “what works” to advance our goals.
We are starting with small data “sprints” that reveal where our faculty come from (What does hiring beyond the “usual suspects” look like?); how much hiring merely replaces the underrepresented scholars who have left (What is our “turnover quotient”?); and shared data definitions on variables that need not differ from university to university (Is there a “lingua franca” for measuring diversity in many of its forms?).
The consortium will offer members mutual support and cooperation across IR, DEI, and faculty success functions to pursue changes in how we collect and report on our data.
Participating members include Columbia, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UChicago, UPenn, and Yale.